Temporary enclosures to be installed by Sunday as part of Jewish festival Sukkot

Part of Detroit Month of Design festivities

Funding from Davidson Foundation, Jennifer and Dan Gilbert

Sukkah x Detroit

Ron Kataki (center) of Nice One designers in Cambridge stands in front of his partially constructed sukkah structure with Ian Klipa (right) and Jake Saphier (left) of Detroit-based craftsmen firm Donut Shop. The structure is being built in downtown Detroit's Capitol Park area as part of a design competition called Sukkah x Detroit.

Huts made from vegetable packing crates, dried grasses, cherry wood and more will be assembled in downtown Detroit's Capitol Park by Sunday.

They're the result of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue's new international design competition called Sukkah x Detroit, funded through a $100,000 William Davidson Foundation grant. It has selected five artists' designs for an event-laden celebration of the Jewish harvest-centric festival Sukkot — in tandem with the Detroit Month of Design.

Seventy-eight applicants from 14 countries responded to the synagogue's call. Each designed a sukkah, a kind of temporary hut structure that gives "thanks for the fall harvest and commemorating the exodus from Egypt," according to the Sukkah x Detroit website.

Each of the five winners get $10,000 for materials and $5,000 fees for service to make and display their sukkahs in Capitol Park from Sunday to Sept. 30, said Jodee Raines, president of the synagogue on Griswold Street.

Raines is also vice president of programs at the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation. She is co-leading the sukkah project with Sigal Hemy, a program officer for the Erb Foundation and another volunteer at the synagogue. The design contest isn't affiliated with the foundation, Raines said.

Sukkah x Detroit is also producing 1,000 110-page catalogs on the competition with a $17,000 gift from Jennifer and Dan Gilbert, the billionaire founder of Detroit-based Quicken Loans Inc. Gilbert's Rock Family of Companies also provided in-kind assistance in setting up the installation in Capitol Park.

The 10-by-12-foot designs, eccentric with a variety of colors, feature harvest- and farm-themed elements. They offer shaded spaces and seating for solitary reflection, lunchtime or other quiet activities.

JE-LE of Detroit is creating a fruit-inspired installation titled "Pocket Space," while Noah Ives of Lincoln, Neb., is creating a sukkah shaped like a pine cone, with plywood leaves surrounding a hollow core. The other three winning designers are Nice One Projects of Cambridge, Mass.; Abre Etteh of New Malden, Britain; and Gamma Architects of Gibraltar.